Although
the mother of Jesus looms large in Christian art and cult, she is accorded
only fleeting attention in the gospels. Mark mentions the mother of Jesus
without giving her name (3:31); John speaks of the mother of Jesus twice
without giving any name. The apostles’ epistles ignore her. In The
Acts of the Apostles she is mentioned only once (1:14). The evangelists
refer to Jesus as “son of Mary,” but they speak of several women named
Mary, without indicating which one of them was Mary the mother of Jesus.

In order to find out who was the mother of Jesus we have to begin by considering
the identity of the various women mentioned in the passion narrative.
Through the centuries hundreds of minds have used their ingenuity in order
to reconcile the statements of the gospels about the women at the cross,
at the burial and at the empty tomb. But all these efforts, some of which
can be described as clever and some as ludicrous, have not succeeded in
formulating a solution that is even barely acceptable, as one can verify
by reading recent commentaries. There is no other instance where the gospels
appear to contradict each other in such a direct and glaring manner.[1] But on one point the four gospels do agree, namely,
that Mary Magdalene was present at all three occasions. If one puts together
all the names of women mentioned in the synoptic gospels, disregarding
in part the order in which they appear, the following table can be drawn:[2]

Mark

Matthew

Luke

First woman

Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene

Second woman

Mary mother of Jacob and Joses

Mary mother of Jacob and Joseph

Mary of Jacob

Third woman

The mother of the sons of Zebedee

Joanna

Salome

There is total agreement on Mary Magdalene: All three gospels mention
her first. There is total disagreement on the third woman; further, Mark
ignores her on one occasion and Matthew on two of the three occasions.
Luke gives names to the women only once.

There is substantial agreement among the synoptic gospels on the second
woman, except that Mark describes her as the mother of Jacob and Joses,
and Matthew as the mother of Jacob and Joseph. This discrepancy provides
a vital clue, because the same discrepancy occurs also in the names of
the brothers of Jesus.[3] It explains
why the gospels introduced “the other Mary”: It would seem that the evangelists
were as interested as the later church in denying that those called Jesus’
brothers were his natural brothers, asserting that they were his cousins.
Hence, the gospels introduced a second Mary, a sister of Jesus’ mother,
as the mother of Jesus’ “brothers.”

John names the women that witnessed the crucifixion in a passage I have
quoted earlier:

His mother and the sister
of his motherMary of Clopas
and Mary Magdalene.

Traditional interpreters understand that John is referring to four women;
but this would mean that four women, all named Mary, came to witness the
crucifixion. This is most unlikely. Other interpreters understand that
three women are mentioned; they would translate: “his mother, the sister
of his mother (Mary of Clopas), and Mary Magdalene.”[4] But this would contradict the other
gospels who know of only two women named Mary as present at the cross
and at the tomb—Mary Magdalene and another Mary.

We may presume that John found in the script of Seneca’s play lines attributed
to Jesus’ mother and other lines to be pronounced by the chorus. The lines
to be sung by the chorus were in the singular, leading John to assume
that only one other woman was present. Having merged the chorus of women
into a single personality, John inferred from some words in the play that
she and Jesus’ mother were sisters, and he identified these sisters, for
the benefit of his Christian audience, as “Mary of Clopas and Mary Magdalene.”
In order to determine which of these two names designated Jesus’ mother,
we must refer to the literary device known as chiasmus, which is
found throughout the New Testament,[5]
and which was characteristic of ancient poetry and formal prose. Let us
compare a verse from Homer’s Iliad (XIV, 323-5), that refers to
two famous mortal women with divine or semi-divine offspring:

Semele and Alcmene in
Thebes who gave birth to valiant Heracles,while Semele
bore Dionysus.

Here,
as in John’s gospel, the description of the second woman is nested within
that of the first, in order to stress the relatedness of the two characters.
That is the essence of chiasmus. To any educated Greek or Roman
the passage could only mean what John intended it to mean, namely, that
“the sister of his mother” was Mary of Clopas, and “his mother” Mary Magdalene.[6] Though the John tried to be most emphatic and unambiguous,
later commentators became confused because they no longer read the gospels
as formal poetic compositions. Seneca had mentioned a single Mary, surnamed
Magdalene, but had to some extent merged her with the chorus of “daughters
of Jerusalem”; it was John who added Mary of Clopas. Later John mentions
only Mary Magdalene as going to the tomb and finding it empty and then
witnessing the resurrection (20:10; 20:18). There John also provides an
important and specific detail: Jesus addresses the woman as “Mary” (20:16);
also in verse 20:11 she is referred to by John simply as “Mary.”

That Mary Magdalene was the mother of Jesus may strike some readers as
shocking, since the figure of Mary Magdalene, as Mary the harlot, is one
of the most popular and colorful of Christian hagiography; but the gospels
know nothing about Mary Magdalene as Mary the harlot. This figure acquired
flesh and bones only in the period that followed the completion of the
gospels, being based on interpretations of the gospel of Luke. This gospel
mentions an unnamed “sinful woman” who brought to Jesus a flask of ointment
and washed his feet with her tears (7:37-38). This unnamed woman came
to be identified with the Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus, and Martha,
who anointed Jesus’ feet (John 12:3). On the basis of this identification
it could be inferred that the “sinful woman” was called Mary. This led
to the identification of the “sinful woman” of Luke with Mary Magdalene,
whom Luke mentions in the following chapter (8:2). By the time of Pope
Gregory the Great (VI century A.D.) it was generally accepted that the
“sinful woman,” Mary of Bethany, and Mary Magdalene were one person.

On the other hand Raymond Brown traces the “elements of a tradition among
the Church Fathers, especially those writing in Syriac, that it was Mary
the mother of Jesus who came to the tomb.”[106] These Church Fathers recognized that the inner logic
of the passion story leads to the conclusion that Jesus’ mother, whom
Jesus entrusted to his beloved disciple, and the Mary who witnessed his
death and burial and also visited his tomb, were one and the same person,
and therefore that the Mary called Magdalene was Jesus’ mother. This is
what is clearly indicated by the text of John, unless this text is read
with preconceived notions. The reason why the majority of traditional
interpreters argue that John mentioned four women is precisely because
they do not want to accept the conclusion that Mary Magdalene was the
mother of Jesus.

The synoptic writers had theological reasons, which we shall discuss later,
for denying that the mother of Jesus was from Magdala and hence called
Magdalene; therefore they left the name Mary Magdalene standing, but omitted
to mention that she was Jesus’ mother. Yet they presented Mary Magdalene
as accompanied by the sister of Jesus’ mother. They put some stress on
the role of this sister, because, for related theological reasons they
claimed that the “brothers” of Jesus were the sons of his mother’s sister.
By omitting to mention that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ mother, they arrived
at the result of assigning a central role in the passion story to a Mary
Magdalene who is not mentioned anywhere else by Mark and Matthew, and
is mentioned briefly by Luke in a passage that is obviously dependent
on the passion narrative. It is not surprising that Christian tradition
built around the name of Mary Magdalene a full personality, since the
synoptic gospels had left their Mary Magdalene in the status of a ghostly
character, albeit an important one.

In Seneca’s conception the chief mourner at the cross and at the tomb
was Mary Magdalene, but she was surrounded by a chorus of mourning women.
Seneca had not identified any of the women, except for Jesus’ mother,
who played the same role as Alcmene, Hercules’ mother in the Hercules
on Oeta, and a role similar to that of Hecuba in The Women of Troy.
For him it was a question only of a character, Jesus’ mother, and a supporting
chorus, which remained composed of anonymous individuals as in any ancient
tragedy. But the identity of the members of the chorus was a matter of
extreme importance to the Christian audience, because the women were understood
to have been witnesses to the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of
Jesus. For this reason the synoptic writers attached names to the members
of the chorus, even though they could not agree with each other.

In order to explain how the evangelists handled the identification of
the women, one must consider the structure and the operation of the chorus
in ancient tragedies, in particular in those that Seneca took as his model.

In Seneca’s Nazarenus the three acts in which the mourning women
were the chorus—those that dealt with the crucifixion, the burial and
the resurrection—were in great part modeled on The Trojan Women
of Euripides and on his own adaptation of this play, The Women of Troy.
In Euripides’ play the main character, Hecuba, witnesses the slaying and
the burial of her grandson Astyanax; Hecuba is an actor of the play, but
she acts in close conjunction with the chorus of mourning Trojan women,
who basically shape and echo her bereavement. Near the end of the play
Hecuba exclaims,

O dearest women...and the chorus
answer:Hecuba, speak
to us as your own.

The
chorus has its own chorus-leader who often engages in lengthy duets with
Hecuba, but in other passages, particularly in the final scene, the words
of Hecuba are so closely intermingled with those of the chorus that she
may be counted as one of its members. In Seneca’s The Women of Troy
the character of Hecuba is even more intimately connected with the chorus,
which limits itself for the most part to expanding on the words of Hecuba.
Several commentators agree that in this play Hecuba acts as the chorus
leader. The function of the chorus in this play is made clear by these
lines:

Sweet to the mourner
is a multitude of sufferers,sweet when
the people echo with lamentations;sorrow and
tears are less bitterwhen a similar
crowd repeats them with their weeping.

In Seneca’s Hercules on Oeta the one who is present at the agony,
the cremation and the ascension to heaven of Hercules is his mother, Alcmene;
but there is also present Iole, the one whom the dying Hercules entrusts
to his son, with a chorus of women who have followed her from her native
Thessaly. The chorus forms one body with Iole, although she is a separate
character of the play.

From the gospels one can gather that there were several mourning women
in Seneca’s play, but that only two stood out prominently. Mary, the mother
of Jesus, was an independent actor of the play, but at times she acted
as the chorus leader. But the chorus had its own chorus leader who spoke
for the chorus, supporting, shadowing, and echoing the first Mary. The
rest of the chorus apparently did not have much of an active role. This
would explain why John, who relied on the written dialogue, mentions only
the presence of two women. Mark and Luke, who saw the tragedy acted, put
more emphasis on the women as a group.

When, as happened at times, the chorus would split into two semi-choruses,
the chorus leader led one part of the chorus and another singer led the
other half. The practice just mentioned would be enough to explain why
the gospel writers concluded that there was more than one Mary among the
mourning women. If Mary was, or acted as, the chorus leader—we learn from
John (20:16) that she was addressed by Jesus as “Mary”—it must have sounded
ambiguous to the Christian audience whether the appellation “Mary” was
addressed to one person or to the entire chorus. It is possible that in
Seneca’s Nazarenus only Mary Magdalene engaged in dialogue and
singing and that the other women supported her role by their gestures
and wailing.

In The Trojan Women of Euripides the chorus addresses Hecuba as
“mother” (line 1229). Hecuba was addressed as “mother” because she was
older than the Trojan women of the chorus, being the grandmother of the
one who was buried and mourned, Astyanax; and, in fact, she addresses
the chorus as “young women” (line 1303). It is possible that in Seneca’s
Nazarenus the same degree of intimacy and identification between
Mary and the chorus was expressed by letting the chorus address Mary as
“sister.” In Latin“sister” is commonly used to refer to a close female
companion. It is conceivable that if the chorus or the chorus-leader addressed
Mary as “sister,” the Christian audience understood that the chorus leader
was Mary Magdalene’s sister.

The name Mary Magdalene means “Mary, a native or a resident of Magdala”—
but it must be emphasized that the word Magdalene has a Latin ending.
Only in Latin is it possible to derive from the noun Magdala an adjective
Magdalena, meaning “woman from Magdala.” This evident fact has not been
called to attention by commentators, because for a priori reasons they
have not considered the possibility that the gospels drew on a source
written in Latin.[8] Seneca referred
to Jesus’ mother as Maria Magdalena on the basis of some piece of information
that he had received to the effect that Mary was a native or a resident
of Magdala. An itinerary for pilgrims written by a certain Theodosius
in 530 A.D., lists Magdala “where our lady Mary was born.” It could be
that the statement that the women followed Jesus from Galilee was based
only on the fact that Mary was from Magdala in Galilee. But the synoptic
gospels preferred not to identify with Jesus’ mother the person whose
name they render into Greek as Maria Magdalene.

The evangelists must have had compelling reasons for denying that a Mary
of Magdala could be Jesus’ mother. Although only Luke tells us that Mary
the mother of Jesus was from Nazareth, the origin of Jesus’ family from
Nazareth appears to have been a well-established fact for the evangelists.
The evangelists must have had some strong reason for connecting Jesus
as closely as possible with Nazareth, so that they had to reject the connection
of his mother Mary with Magdala. Even if it were accepted as beyond question
that Joseph and Jesus lived in Nazareth, this would not exclude that Joseph’s
wife Mary was born or resided in Magdala. Magdala was on the Sea of Galilee,
less than three miles north of Tiberias, on the southern limit of the
Plain of Gennesaret. At the time of Jesus the road that went east from
Nazareth reached the Sea of Galilee at Magdala; therefore a girl of Magdala
might well have married a man of Nazareth. But the evangelists considered
it so important to emphasize the connection of Jesus with Nazareth that
even his mother had to be born there.

Several critical interpreters have considered the association of Jesus’
family with Nazareth to be a later development; they are inclined to think
that Jesus was a native of the area where he began his ministry, the north-west
corner of the Sea of Galilee. In his account of Jesus’ travels in Galilee,
Matthew writes (9:1):

He got into a boat, went
back across the lake,and came into
his own town.

“His own town” had to be one of the cities along the western shore of
the Sea of Galilee—quite possibly Magdala. It could not be Nazareth, since
Nazareth is about fifteen miles away in the hill country. A large number
of scholars have argued that the epithet Nazarene or Nazorean has nothing
to do with the village of Nazareth. In Matthew 2:23 it is stated that
the holy family, after returning from Egypt, settled in Nazareth “that
what was spoken by the prophets be fulfilled”; but no corresponding prophecy
has been found in the Old Testament or any other text. The crux of the
problem is that the evangelists were concerned with denying a connection
between Jesus and a sect of Nazarenes.

At the time of Jesus there were in the Holy Land several groups called
Nazarene.[9]
The Nazarite vow was a Hebrew constitution of ancient origin. Those who
took Nazarite vows, either for a given period or for life, had to follow
particular rules of purity, abstaining from intoxicants (Num. 6:3) and
not cutting their hair (Num. 6:5). In the time of Jesus these vows were
used as a sign of distinction by John the Baptist and his followers. For
the gospel writers Jesus’s association with the Baptist was a most sensitive
issue. Their main concern was to prove to the Romans that only the followers
of Jesus could be considered true Jews, because only they recognized the
Messiah, or Christ, foretold by the prophets. Although the gospel writers
make it clear that Jesus’ baptism by John was the determining factor in
the inauguration of his mission, they go to great lengths to minimize
Jesus’ debt to John. The Baptist was acceptable as long as he could be
made subordinate to Jesus. But there was one piece of evidence about Jesus’
relationship with John that was widely known and hence most difficult
to suppress, namely, Jesus’ appellation as “the Nazarene.” In order to
explain this title the gospel writers had to tie Jesus as closely as possible
to the Galilean village of Nazareth. Since his birthplace had to be Bethlehem,
according to prophecy (Micah V. I.), it became essential to link Jesus’
entire family as closely as possible to Nazareth, and by the same token
to deny that Jesus’ mother could be from any other place, even nearby
Magdala. The matter had to be of vital importance to the gospel writers,
for by denying that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ mother, they sacrificed
much of the coherence and literary poignancy of the last three acts of
Seneca’s play.

[1] Among all the attempts at reconciliation
I may mention the one which consists of breaking the two or three scenes
of women at the cross and at the tomb into about a dozen scenes: In each
scene different women come forward and then withdraw. In this way the participants
at the burial are Mary Magdalene, Salome, Joanaa, and a variable number
of other Marys, which may or may not include Mary, the mother of Jesus.

[3] According to Mark (6:3)his brothers
were:“ Jacob and Joses and Judas and Simon,” whereas according to Matthew
(13:55) they were “ Jacob and Joseph and Judas and Simon.”

[4] The interpretation according to which
John mentioned three women appears to be rather forced, but it has a solid
justification. Clopas is not mentioned anywhere else in the gospels, so
that one would be left wondering who is “Mary of Clopas” (“Mary of Clopas”could
mean the mother, the wife, or the daughter of Clopas). But Eusebius of
Caesarea ( d. 339 A.D.) quoted (Hist. Eccl. III. 11) Hegesippus ( f1.
150 A.D.) to the effect that Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of
Jesus, had a brother called Clopas, who married the sister of Mary, also
called Mary. In other words, Joseph and his brother Clopas would have
married two sisters, both called Mary. This view was accepted by St. Jerome
(d. 419 A.D.) and became authoritative, although later is found a stumbling
block in the doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary .(Jerome, Ad
Helvidium; In Matthaeum II; Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica
IV .2.).

[6] Whoever added the annotation was most
interested in affirming that the sister of Jesus‘mother was married to
someone named Clopas. Early Christian writers identify this Clopas as
a brother of Joseph. The clause “Mary of Clopas and Mary Magdalene” was
added because Christians, beginning with the age of the composition of
the gospels, were interested in maintaining that Joseph was closely related
to his wife Mary.

[8] There is another important influence
of the Latin language on the name of Jesus‘ mother. Our manuscripts of
the gospels wavew constantly between spelling her name as Maria
and as Mariam. The wavering in the manuscript tradition is so general
that most editors do not attempt to decide which is the better spelling.
Mariam is the proper term based on Hebrew and Aramaic diction, whereas
Maria has definitely the character of a Latin name. It can be inferred
that Seneca spoke of a Maria Magdalena and that the gospel writers
rendered her name into their Greek text as Maria, many copyists
edited this name, which was preposterous for a Hebrew woman, into Mariam.

[9] Ephiphanius reports that before the
time of Jesus there was a Jewish sect of Nasaraeans, which he distinguishes
from that of the Christian Nazoraeans (adversus haereses, XXIX). St. Jerome
calls Jesus Nazarenus as well as Nazareus (In Matth.
III). The names of these groups derived in some cases from the Hebrew
root nasar “to observe” and in others fromthe
Hebrew root nazar.“to dedicate, to separate.” These two roots are
totally unrelated linguistically, but they may have been confused for
religious reasons at the tome of Jesus. They would be easily confused
in the Greek rendering.